100 books like Tougaloo Blues

This book epitomizes what it means to be Black and male in American society and how one’s poor choices or the choices that chose one can be overcome. Horton, a native of the segregated South and the by-product of educators, headed north to college and became swept away by the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. A major drug smuggler, he spent seven years in prison for his crime. But it was during that time, that poetry discovered him and upon his release he earned a B.A., Master, and PhD degrees. In fact, he describes himself as the only tenured professor with seven convicted felonies. In addition, Horton is an award-winning poet, essayist, musician, and devotes much of his time to outreach into the criminal justice system to provide hope for others. Dead Weight, with its theme of redemption, is destined to become an American classic and should be… show more.

In 1946, two African American couples were lynched in rural Georgia by a white mob. Grooms fictionalized that account from the perspective of one of the victims, perpetrators, and a pre-teen eyewitness and in the process comes to terms with redemption, race, and violence not only in the South but in the nation as well. Grooms has the ability to juxtapose the beauty of the Southern landscape with the horrors that have occurred there with breathtaking imagery and conciseness. This book not just deals with the victims of such horrific acts, but the often untold damage done to the progeny of those who perpetrated the act. This is a fiction that will always be relevant as long as a nation struggles with injustice, oppression, and white supremacy.  

This is where prose and poetry blossom into memoir. James’ account of growing up impoverished with an absentee father and how a small rural Louisiana community became her surrogate family is both moving and insightful. She engages in an exercise of self-examination of the things that made her a writer and the person she has come to be. There is much grace and beauty in these pages as she seeks a path of truth and understanding and mending a broken relationship with her estranged father. This story is both personal and universal and provides understanding of the human condition. There is much poverty, pain, humor, blues, disappointment, and love in this book. Always love.

This book is reminiscent of Jean Toomer’s Cane. It blurs the lines between poetry, history, and the blues. Shakespeare’s Dark Lady sonnets are at the heart of a book that is both breathtaking and spellbinding. But more than that, this book is a reclamation of the Black female body. Over the centuries the Black female body has been defined by everyone but the Black female. Williams redefines notions of beauty, dignity, and self-worth in a world that is antithetical to the Black female body. This book is a salvo across the bough of social, racial, and political history that has dehumanized Black life throughout the centuries. Not only does Williams, a Nashville native, reclaim all that has been distorted about the Black female body, she celebrates it as well.

I read so much poetry in prison—words about survival, and loss, and absence. But one thing I did not read was poetry about people who’d been in prison like me, and wish I had. This poetry collection wasn’t out then, but I think I would have loved it if it were. 

Kevin Young traces the inextricable bonds of death and love in this poetry collection that encompasses the accidental death of his father and, in the thick of that loss, the birth of his son and the beginning of his own fatherhood.

I am drawn to how he writes about the repetitions and informal rituals of grief—the necessary ones involved in the immediate aftermath of loss, and the ongoing ones that ask for our attention again and again, becoming a doorway into what still waits for us. Young is wonderfully stubborn in keeping his eyes open to the searing awfulness of losing as well as to the breathtaking, complicated wonder of life that persists.

Jacqueline Woodson is a National Book Award Newbury and Coretta Scott King winner. But I know her as a great friend.

Brown Girl Dreaming is about her growing up in South Carolina during the 1960s and 1970s. My memoir Defiant takes places a few years before Brown Girl Dreaming. But the South was still the South, and segregation was still segregation. A great read from an outstanding writer.    

Bukowski had a unique perspective on the world, and anyone who has read his work would most definitely agree. This book, which is a collection of some of Bukowski’s greatest pieces in my opinion, has a way of resonating with you on a personal level. Whether it be gaining a newfound perspective on the animals that scurry around our yards, or of a gambler wasting away in a casino on a Monday afternoon, Bukowski has a knack for bringing up the world’s problems in a way that is both depressing and humorous at the same time, while also giving peeks at his wit and charm as well.

This is one of the best books I have read about a long walk – in this case, the poet laureate Simon Armitage’s account of the 19 days he spent walking the Pennine Way, beginning at its northern extremity and ending up near his home in West Yorkshire. This is not a precious, solipsistic memoir of the sort favoured by many of our celebrated New Nature Writers, but a wonderfully droll account of what was often a hard slog, where at the end of each day Armitage, who set off without any money, sings for his supper, reading poetry in village halls, pubs, barns, and other venues, and takes pot luck with whatever accommodation he is offered for the night. Walking Home provides a vivid portrait of one of our great landscapes, and the quirks of character and acts of kindness he encounters on the way.

I love this book because it’s an epic poetry book. The first of its kind. Three-hundred and ninety-six-page poetry book. Ariana Reines is one of my favorite top three modern poets as well. Poetry lovers should have this book in their collection. If not, what are you waiting for? It’s a masterpiece. I can see her soul in this book, I can see her heart. I can see her mind. It’s as if sand is literally under your feet as you read these poems divided into sections. This book is meant to be read slowly, like a fine glass of wine. It took me months to read it. It taught me that a poet is an artist and is a traveler of time and space. It taught me to break rules and to do whatever you want as a poet. It taught me to not limit myself as a writer… show more.